Director: Philippe Mora
Year: 1987
Country: Australia/Mexico
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Werewolf
Plot:
After finding a video shot by his grandfather, a professor is asked by the US Government to fly to Australia to investigate a series of werewolf reports, where he runs into a friend who is in a relationship with a pregnant marsupial werewolf and must save her tribe from being exterminated.
Review:
There are a few really nice things about this one. Among the better elements in this one is the rather intriguing central setup that offers the kind of localized focal points that tie into the known folklore as well. The focus is on its rather intriguing central premise of a specifically Australian colony of werewolves called were-thylacines, since these are marsupial werewolves, which is one of the most creative and original ideas in the genre. Now, what merit it has rests largely on the fact that it came up with this outlandish premise and it follows through on it, giving the chance to learn more than they probably ever wanted to know about these kinds of creatures through these interactions or the different experiments conducted on several captive members of the family. The sequences devoted to them are quite ingeniously written out and paint a fully developed picture of their family life, such as the tribal rules and interactions, which go a long way in making the outlandish family life all the more believable.
When it decides to go all out, it can deliver some amusing scenes. This is mostly with the scenes at the end involving the creatures being hunted down in the middle of the Outback that have a lot to like, not just with the silly sequences of them trying to outwit their chasing pursuers in a fine sequence. The transformations done are quite nicely handled, especially the one forced on by the strobing light nearby, while other scenes, including a sequence at the ballerina exhibit, which is one of the more inventive ideas around, and is a full-on cheese scene that plays out wonderfully, or a captive werewolf turning during an interrogation, have some more solid scenes. As well, the attempts at comedy are also nicely done, as an exchange on a bus, and several lines during the werewolf hunt are worthy of a chuckle. The most amount of laughs occur due to the film-within-a-film scenes, which poke fun at the genre with a couple of great moments. These make for some rather good things in here.
There are still a couple of things keeping this down. The most obvious is that the film is way too cheesy to ever take seriously, whether this was intended or not. The werewolves look really terrible with over-elongated snouts, non-threatening eyes, and have more of a dog look to them than anything. The transformations occur in unusual places, but they really can't hold up that well and come off very unconvincingly. The lack of gore is also a big problem, as there's a large amount of bodies knocked off in here, and it would've made the film a tad more tolerable had we seen them getting their kills on-screen. The ending chase through the bush is really hard to sit through when it delves into a large amount of political debate over tolerating the species of werewolves more than the action shown. It's largely out of place and slows the movie down when they all go off on those rants when it should've been carrying through on its action scenes, which showed lots of potential. With several unnecessary subplots driving up the running time and making this way too convoluted, there are some issues here knocking it down.
Overview: ***/5
Sure, it's a giant cheese-fest, but there are some good ideas in here that may not be all that original, but it at least showed that there was some creativity used in the process. This is still only recommended to the most hardcore werewolf fan or those who enjoy this era of cheesy genre cinema, while most others might want to heed caution.
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